I thought about my parents as I walked, wondered what they would think about the fact that Bram had ended up running something like the Hunt, that I was here participating in it.
I’d been ten years old when they’d died, and I lost more of them every year, my memories fading around the edges like the pictures in my mom’s old photo albums.
But one thing I did remember: my parents had been involved citizens. I had vague memories of town meetings, of protests, and more than once I’d woken up in the middle of the night for a glass of water to find my mom, head bent to a computer, writing another strongly worded letter to one of her many targets.
Until recently, I’d thought they’d be proud of me. I only had a two-year degree, but I was a small-business owner (and yeah, Bram had helped me get started, but I was the one who kept the coffee shop in the black every year), financially independent, a good sister, a good citizen.
But they wouldn’t like that I was here, letting a bunch of masked men chase me, subjecting myself to their desires if they caught me, asking them to murder someone for me if they didn’t.
My parents would have a million objections, all of them reasonable. They would be worried for my safety, worried for the state of Bram’s inner well-being over the fact that he’d found the Hunt necessary, even enjoyable.
And yeah, that was something I tried not to think about. Because I loved my brother with everything I was. He’d suffered even more than me after our parents’ deaths, both because he’d been in the car with them and because he’d had to take care of me afterwards, and Ireallydidn’t want to think about what he’d done to the girls he caught in the tunnels before he’d fallen in love with Maeve.
Or even the things he did with Maeve to be honest. Maeve was like the sister I never had. I didn’t want to think about hernaked with anyone, but especially not my brother and his two best friends.
I slowly stopped shivering as I walked. I was still super uncomfortable — my clothes stuck to my skin, making me feel somehow both cold and hot at the same time — but at least my teeth weren’t chattering.
And now I noticed the tunnel wasn’t entirely empty. There was junk scattered here and there: old wooden crates, metal buckets, wooden pallets stacked with boxes filled with paper and miscellaneous artifacts I didn’t dare stop to investigate.
There was even an occasional piece of furniture: a warped wood table, a chipped cabinet, a stack of plastic chairs that looked like they might have come from the 1950s.
The tunnels had been built during Prohibition as a way to get alcohol to the bars and restaurants on Main Street, and almost all of the shops had doors leading to them. I knew this because the coffee shop had one too. I’d discovered it before we opened, when we’d been working to transform the store from the salon that had been there since I was a kid into Cassie’s Cuppa.
I hadn’t known what it was for at the time, and since one peek into the tunnels had scared the crap out of me, I’d locked the door and never looked back.
But when I’d mentioned it to Bram his expression had darkened. “Never go in the tunnels, Cass. Promise me.”
And I’d promised. Because how could I know about the Hunt my brother led there? How could I know I’d need to make use of it myself one day?
Now it was obvious some of the business owners on Main had used the tunnel as overflow storage over the years, a communal junk room filled with pieces of Blackwell Falls history long forgotten.
And there was something else in the tunnels too: twice I came across pallets of bottled water, clearly newer and placedthere more recently, a surprising act of generosity from the men behind the Hunt, or maybe left over from when Bram, Poe, and Remy had run it.
Almost everyone was scared of Bram, but despite his hulking body and the scar on his face, he wasn’t a monster. I could see him, Poe, and Remy leaving water for the girls in the Hunt.
Or had it been left by the men who ran it now? And who was that exactly?
I remembered the man in the hawk mask who’d stood in front of me with the clipboard, the way his black hair had brushed his bare shoulders, the ink that so totally covered his arms and torso that he’d looked like a mountainous shadow, the smell of him, a deep and primal scent that made me think dark and dangerous things.
Now I felt the same stir of desire I’d felt in the holding room.
“Jesus, Cassie. Now isnotthe time to be horny.”
On the other hand, who could blame me? I was a twenty-three-year-old virgin. In the last three years I’d witnessed my best friend fall in love with the three men known as the Blackwell Beasts, and even more shocking, had seen my brother and his best friends give up the Hunt for Maeve.
Everyone was fucking — and falling in love — but me.
My virginity had become an anchor weighing me down, something I was tired of thinking about. Because it was weirdly hard to get rid of now that I was in my twenties. I’d tried doing it the nice way, but any guy I liked was, well,toonice to take my virginity. They had all these questions. They wanted to be sure I wascomfortable. To be sure I wasconsenting.
And yeah, consent was sexy and all that. Totally.
But I’d been surprised to find that in the context of my virginity, all the talk just felt awkward, like having the “birds and bees” talk with Bram when I was eleven, something that he’d tried and failed to do matter-of-factly, without stammeringor blushing, until I’d finally just covered my face with my hands and begged him to stop.
I didn’t want to talk. I just wanted to fuck someone and get it over with so I could feel normal like Daisy and my other best friend Sarai, whose traditional Indian family woulddieif they knew the stuff she got up to on the dating apps.
All of which was why the Hunt had seemed like the answer to more than one of my problems.
If I won, the men who’d claimed me in the holding room (I’d be a liar if I said my pulse didn’t quicken at the thought of the Hawks claiming me) would kill the man responsible for the death of my parents.
